Court Halt on GMO Alfalfa Shows USDA Failure

By Carey Gillam
Reuters
Thursday 15 March 2007

    Kansas City, Missouri - A court decision overturning US government approval for a biotech alfalfa underscores complaints made for years that the USDA is failing to adequately oversee genetically altered crops, biotech crop critics said on Tuesday.

    And the critics believe it sets a precedent that should prompt more stringent oversight of these controversial crops.

    "It is a big deal for the court to do that. It is the first time it has happened in the US," said Margaret Mellon, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Food and Environment Program, which is not a party to the case.

    There have been concerns for years about the USDA's lack of proper oversight. Indeed, other recent court rulings have leveled criticism against US government oversight of biotech crops.

    "There are some serious problems there," said Mellon. "They need to be fixed."

    USDA officials would not comment Tuesday, a day after US District Court Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California issued an order on Monday that vacated USDA approval of Monsanto Co.'s "Roundup Ready" alfalfa.

    The crop, genetically altered to withstand treatments of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, was approved in 2005. But Judge Breyer immediately halted any more seed sales and ordered that any planting must cease after March 30 after he determined that the USDA violated the law in allowing unrestricted commercial planting of the crop.

    The judge said the USDA should have prepared an environmental impact statement before deregulating the Roundup Ready alfalfa. Such a statement is designed to explore negative consequences that might result from a release.

    In the case of biotech alfalfa, a perennial livestock feed crop, several farm, environmental and consumer activists groups said there were many potential problems, including contamination of organic and conventional alfalfa supplies with the biotech version.

    Other crops, including most notably corn and rice, have already been contaminated with biotech varieties, forcing in some situations costly recalls and lost export sales.

    "I challenged them over and over to give us any scientific evidence that they can control the gene flow from these crops. So far they haven't been able to do that," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of The Center for Food Safety, which led the lawsuit against the US Agriculture Department.

    "This technology was put out into the environment without any idea of how to control it," he said. "Now the agency for the first time will have to come up with some sort of answers as to how you can control this and be accountable for it."

    Like USDA, Monsanto officials also declined to discuss the potential ramifications of the ruling Tuesday, but company spokeswoman Lori Fisher said Monsanto was informing Roundup Ready alfalfa seed dealers of the court order and outlining actions they must take.

    "Basically, this communication informs dealers to stop sales of Roundup Ready alfalfa under court order, to secure Roundup Ready alfalfa seed not sold in inventory and to expect further instructions as the situation develops," Fisher said.

    Over the last decade, the USDA has approved applications for more than 70 genetically modified organism (GMO) crop lines, many of which have been embraced by farmers because they are easier and/or more profitable to grow.

    Sharon Bomer, a vice president at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), said her group, which represents the interests of biotech companies, including Monsanto, said that the safety of alfalfa and other commercialized biotech crops was not an issue. And she said the court ruling on alfalfa appeared limited.

    "We think this deals with only one situation," she said.

    Still, the oversight, primarily handled by the USDA's Animal Health and Plant Health Inspection Service, has been repeatedly criticized as lacking. An Office of Inspector General audit of APHIS' and its biotechnology regulatory services unit found numerous holes in oversight efforts in a report issued in December 2005.

    The government is currently reviewing and rewriting the regulations for field testing and for deregulation of genetically modified crops with a final report on the overhaul due out in the next few months.

    In the meantime, Kimbrell said he was dismayed that the USDA appears to remain more focused on supporting Monsanto's commercial needs than on protecting the interests of others in agriculture.

    "I have never seen a government agency so openly and unashamedly defend the interests of a corporation and not represent the interests of farmers," he said.

Judge Halts Sale of Biotech Alfalfa Seeds

Activists applaud the preliminary ruling as first ban on genetically manipulated crops.

By Marc Lifsher
The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday 13 March 2007

    A federal judge Monday overturned the Bush administration's 2005 approval of genetically engineered alfalfa seeds and stopped their sale for now, in what activists hailed as the first ban on selling such crops.

    U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture failed to adequately conduct an environmental impact study before approving them for sale.

    Monday's ruling grew out of the judge's decision last month that the USDA failed to take seriously concerns that genetically altered seeds could migrate to other alfalfa crops. Nothing in the National Environmental Protection Act, "the relevant regulations, or the case law support such a cavalier response," he said.

    The seeds, developed by agribusiness giant Monsanto Co., are now in their second season of use. Such genetically engineered seeds are grown in 200,000 of the nation's 23 million acres of alfalfa, widely grown for hay and animal grazing.

    The seeds were re-engineered so that alfalfa plants can resist the ill effects of another Monsanto product, a widely used herbicide known by the trade name of Roundup. As a result, some farmers say, they can get greater crop yield and better quality alfalfa.

    California is the nation's No. 1 alfalfa producer with about 1 million acres under cultivation. The state's 2004 harvest was worth $853 million.

    Breyer's preliminary injunction came in a lawsuit brought by the San Francisco-based Center for Food Safety and other environmental groups.

    It is the first ban on the genetic manipulation of traits of basic crops, such as corn, canola, soybeans and cotton, people familiar with the case confirmed.

    Boosters of organic foods called the judge's order a landmark in protecting the public interest. A representative of the Agriculture Department in Washington could not be reached.

    But some farmers, agricultural scientists and officials at Monsanto said the ruling, if upheld, would pose a major setback for the burgeoning U.S. biotech industry.

    "It's a very significant development, the next step in the pushback by the federal court system for the grossly inadequate environmental review of genetically engineered crops," said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist of the Organic Center, a nonprofit Rhode Island-based group that does research into the benefits of organic food.

    The ban will remain in effect until the judge considers lifting it or making it permanent. Monsanto is banking on increasing the acreage by convincing Breyer at an April hearing that farmers can use so-called Roundup Ready alfalfa seeds without contaminating neighboring fields.

    Researchers have developed "stewardship" practices that provide "a robust and responsible approach to managing the environmental questions raised by the plaintiffs in this case," said Jerry Steiner, Monsanto's executive vice president.

    "I hope this is just a bump in the road," added Phillip Bowles, who grows Roundup Ready alfalfa on about one-tenth of his 6,000-acre alfalfa farm in Los Banos in Merced County. Without the new seeds, farmers will be forced to use herbicides that are far stronger than Roundup if they want to control weeds, Bowles said.

    Allen Van Deynze, a biotechnology scientist at UC Davis who's done extensive research on genetically modified alfalfa, said that genetic plants could be managed effectively so that less than 1% of the seeds would contaminate other crops. "We've managed gene flow in the seed industry for 100 years now," he said.

    Although Van Deynze confirmed that he received some of the financial support for his research from the seed industry, he stressed that all his papers had been thoroughly reviewed by other scientists in the field.

    Van Deynze said that he and his colleagues at UC Davis also had developed management plans for using Roundup Ready seeds that have been accepted by alfalfa growers, who use conventional and organic methods.

    But Jim Rickert, who raises 3,000 acres of organic and conventional alfalfa in Siskiyou and Shasta counties in Northern California, was skeptical. "I've heard this particular statement made before," he said.